The Germanna Foundation, on its web page, or in its printed material, has some errors in the general history of the Germanna Colonists. Let’s take a look at some of these mistakes.
"When Baron de Graffenried returned to Europe, Lt. Governor Alexander Spotswood requested him to recruit for him some German miners. Graffenried persuaded 14 individuals with families, totaling 42 persons from the town of Siegen and Müsen in the principality of Nassau-Siegen, Germany to come to Virginia."
Graffenried returned to Europe, by way of London, in 1713. He arrived there in the fall of the year and found that the people from Nassau-Siegen were there. Graffenried himself writes that he advised the Germans to go home to Nassau-Siegen, since George Ritter and Company was bankrupt. This, of course, hardly sounds like the way that a recruiter goes about his work. It also shows that was he not thinking about Spotswood but about the George Ritter and Company.
A recruitment activity did commence in 1710 under Johann Justus Albrecht, for the George Ritter and Company, which was planning on developing silver mines on the headwaters of the Potomac River, i.e., in the Shenandoah Valley. This activity had commenced before Spotswood was even in Virginia.
We do not know exactly why the Germans were in London in 1713. Graffenried denied strongly that he had in any way encouraged the group to come to London, and then to America. He admits that he wrote that if one or two persons wanted to come to America to have a look, then they could come. But he implied this would be at their own expense, and not a permanent move.
About the best that we can say about the situation is that there was a misunderstanding between Graffenried in America and Albrecht in Germany/London. But the work that Albrecht had done, which resulted in the Germans going to London, was intended for the George Ritter and Company work.
Given the predicament into which Albrecht and Graffenried had put the Germans, they (the Germans) did manage to find a way of escaping, which was in line with their original intentions. They counted their money and concluded they were short about four years of labor to pay for the trip. So they said they would work for people in America if those people would pay the balance. At the time they made this proposal, they had no particular person or persons in mind for whom they would be working. Nor was there any specification as to what they would be doing. This was merely a means to put their lives back into some resemblance of normality.
(22 Aug 01)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.